A Silver Creek Christmas

Oh, yeah. He'd lost his mind all right. Joe was one-hundred percent sure of that. Did that stop him from kissing Sara?

Nope.

He kept his mouth on hers, taking in her scent and taste all at once. That double dose of her slammed through him just as hard as the adrenaline had during the attack. And that wasn't good for several reasons. One was because there was no way he could focus on their situation with his mouth occupied with hersit was giving the rest of his body distractions it didn't need.

But the other reason was Sara herself.

No way was she going to like this. Joe pulled back and looked at the damage he'd done. Her eyes were narrowed. She was breathing through her mouth. Clearly riled to the core. The hand she slapped on his chest proved that. However, he saw something else that made this mistake even bigger. Anger wasn't the only emotion in her eyes.

Oh, man.

There was plenty of heat. Heat that obviously neither of them wanted, but it'd been there since shortly after they'd met two years earlier. It didn't seem remotely interested in cooling down, either, even after what he'd done to her.

"First of all, I want someone to check on my horses and my ranch," she said.

Not something the average person would have considered just minutes after nearly being killed, but this was Sara. The place had been in her family for six generations, and it was always at the top of her list when it came to any plans or decisions she made. Joe understood that, for the most part, since the Rylands had been in Silver Creek about that long, too, but his parents had moved one county over when he was a kid and had ranched there. He didn't have the same connection to the place that she did.

Joe nodded. "I'll have Sawyer send out some of the hands from the Ryland ranch." It was plenty big enough for them to spare the help, and since the hands worked for a family of lawmen, they knew how to take basic precautions. Unfortunately, precautions might be needed for a while.

"Why?" she demanded, her stare still drilling holes in him.

Joe figured that single question encompassed a lot of territory. It was mostly territory where he didn't want to go and no doubt included the ill-timed, bad idea of a kiss.

"That's why I said I was sorry in advance," he told her. It didn't answer diddly about her why, but at least she'd know that he hadn't exactly approved of the lip-lock.

Her teeth came together, and she snatched the paper towel from him as if she'd declared war on it. She also moved far away, to the other side of the kitchen. It didn't help much. He still had the taste of her in his mouth, her scent on his clothes, and of course, he could see her. That was the ultimate turn-on. Even in her loose jeans, flannel shirt and buckskin jacket, Sara could make him burn.